Storage company Public Storage and solar power firm Solar Landscape have started construction on an 87.53MW community solar project spanning three states in the Midwest and north-east of the US.
The companies, both of which are based in the US, announced that the project would consist of 133 individual solar installations, comprising 44 sites in Illinois, 57 in Maryland and 32 in New Jersey. Residents of these states will be able to subscribe to solar installations built on Public Storage buildings near their homes, and receive discounted electricity produced by these facilities, creating local communities of people receiving energy from the same clean source.
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The companies announced that there could also be “additional savings” for low- and moderate-income households, and while these groups are the primary target of this project, neither company provided additional details on how these people in particular would be incorporated into the project. Public Storage did note, however, that it expects the projects to save residents of Maryland nearly US$1 million per year on energy bills.
“Community solar furthers Public Storage’s strong commitments to sustainability and our communities,” said Public Storage president of asset management John Sambuco. “We are providing affordable renewable energy for low- and moderate-income residents, reducing our collective carbon impact on the environment, and converting non-used rooftop area into socioeconomically productive space for our company.”
Solar Landscape has worked with companies outside the solar sector previously, such as a project to build a 556kW rooftop solar facility on the top of a warehouse owned by Principal Asset Management, and will bring the same ownership model and intention to the Public Storage project.
The project will also work in conjunction with the Illinois Shines programme, a state government initiative to encourage residential solar development to meet the state’s targets of sourcing all of its energy from renewable sources by 2050. The Illinois Shines programme has already provided support for 21 projects, with a combined capacity of 13.2MW, and these projects are also included in the new Public Storage-Solar Landscape portfolio.
Community energy projects are an attractive investment, especially for lower income groups who might not be able to access or install rooftop solar. The model is particularly viable for the solar sector, unlike industries such as oil and gas, as a small solar installation can be paid for and installed on a local scale in a way that an oil rig cannot.
This has translated to significant interest in community solar in particular in the US. Wood Mackenzie and the Coalition for Community Solar Access expect the capacity of new US community solar installations to double between now and 2028, despite a year-on-year decline in capacity from 1.19GW to 1.01GW between 2021 and 2022, as interest in the market remains high.